9/11 Warnings

not a surprise attack nor an "intelligence failure"

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these
people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center,
take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to
use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."
-- Condoleeza Rice, May 16, 2002 press conference

"The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict
mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations
have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."
-- CIA report for President Bush, July 2001

Warnings about 9/11 -- who, what, where, when -- were sent to the Bush / Cheney administration
from

An article sheds new light on the CIA's desperate efforts to warn about 9/11. Why didn't the White House listen?

BY PAUL CAMPOS

Last year Jonathan Kay, a Canadian journalist, published "Among the Truthers," an interesting chronicle of, among other things, post-9/11 conspiracy theories. Many of these theories are outlandish on their face, such as claims that the twin towers were brought down by controlled demolition, that airplanes never struck them, that Flight 93 landed in Cleveland rather than crashing in a Pennsylvania field, and so forth.

Now if I were inclined toward a conspiratorial view of the world, I would speculate that the very outlandishness of these claims is itself part of a conspiracy to obscure what really happened on 9/11. This meta-conspiracy theory would go something like this: Over the past 11 years, it has slowly but inexorably become clear that the CIA uncovered key details of the 9/11 plot several months in advance, and tried on numerous occasions to get the Bush administration to take action to stop it.

In a New York Times Op-Ed, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html Kurt Eichenwald offers new evidence on this front. Throughout the spring and summer of 2001, Eichenwald claims the CIA presented the administration with compelling evidence that al-Qaida operatives were in the United States, that they were planning a major terrorist attack intended to produce mass casualties, and that this attack was imminent. In response, the Bush administration did nothing.

Indeed, the administration's level of inaction was so negligent that senior intelligence officials actually considered resigning, so as not to be in a position of responsibility when the attack took place:

"Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else."

For a long time, the administration successfully covered up this series of events, by employing the clever strategy of revealing a small and ultimately misleading part of the truth: In April 2004, it declassified a single daily briefing, that featured the startling headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," but on closer examination did not contain much in the way of specifics regarding the attack, which took place just 35 days after the memo's printing.

Releasing this single briefing was deeply misleading, because it gave the impression that the administration had been given just one rather vague warning about the impending attack, rather than a series of much more concrete briefings, which ought to have put the government on high alert. The shocking truth, if Eichenwald is correct, is that the Bush administration was told enough in advance about the nature and timing of the 9/11 attacks that it could quite possibly have stopped them, but, for whatever reason, President Bush and his advisers chose to ignore those warnings. (According to Eichenwald, some White House neocons believed, "Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat.")

Note that to this point my meta-conspiracy narrative has the unusual virtue of being based on nothing but what are now the known facts of the matter. To go beyond this, we have to enter the realm of speculation, which is where things get "conspiratorial" in the dismissive sense of the word. We might, for example, speculate that certain neoconservatives in and around the White House were not wholly displeased with the failure to stop the attacks, since they provided an emotionally compelling, although completely irrational, basis for launching the invasion of Iraq these people were laboring to bring about.

We could take one more step, and note that, in the years after the attacks, neoconservatives played an active role in both publicizing and debunking the most extravagant 9/11 conspiracy theories, because nothing is more useful to a real conspiracy than directing attention to a series of absurd ones, which tend to discredit the very concept itself. (Note how former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer is already attacking Eichenwald as a "truther.")

Now, do I believe in this meta-conspiracy theory? Of course not, because I am – or at least aspire to be – a Very Serious Person, and Very Serious People do not believe in conspiracies. They do, however, participate in them.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

This page ostensibly is an effort to refute the hoax
that 4,000 Jews, or 4,000 Israelis, were warned not to go to work at
the WTC on 9/11, thereby showing Israeli involvement (or complicity)
in the attacks. The State Department cites the bin Laden videotape of
October 2004 to disprove Israeli involvement (Israeli foreknowledge
is carefully avoided by this effort). The anonymous authors at the State
Department say:

Vague conspiracy theories blaming Israel began to appear
within 24 hours of the attacks. Syria's government-owned Al Thawra
newspaper may have been the first newspaper to make the "4,000
Jews" claim. According to U.S. embassy reporting, its September
15th edition falsely claimed "four thousand Jews were absent
from their work on the day of the explosions."
The 4,000 figure apparently came from an article entitled "Hundreds
of Israelis missing in WTC attack" which appeared in the September
12th internet edition of the Jerusalem Post. It stated, "The
Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem has so far received the names of 4,000
Israelis believed to have been in the areas of the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon at the time of the attacks."
Unknown conspiracy theorists apparently seized upon the 4,000 figure,
transforming it into the false claim that 4,000 Jews did not report
for work at the World Trade Center on September 11.

In this article, the State Department references the
Jerusalem Post article at fpp.co.uk, the website of Holocaust Denier
and pseudo-historian David Irving. (FPP is Focal Point Publications,
which is Irving’s organization.) In other words, a United States
Government media campaign dedicated to refuting “misinformation”
is promoting a neo-Nazi promoting Holocaust
Denial without even mentioning his political affiliation and his
efforts to promote lies about the Nazi genocides. Is Irving’s
website really the only place to find this article by Jerusalem Post?
Does the State Department consider Irving a reliable source of information?
Or is the State Department trying to bait 9/11 skeptics to think of
Irving’s website as a credible source of information about 9/11?
(Note: the Jerusalem Post, a publication with extensive connections
to the neo-conservatives, has an on-line archive that goes back to the
late 1990s, but this September 12, 2001 article is not accesible from
their archives.)

Irving, like several other Holocaust deniers, has published
information about 9/11 complicity that might be true, but is unverifiable.
He published a claim that Condolezza Rice was the source who warned
then San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown not to fly on 9/11 (the September
12, 2001 San Francisco Chronicle published a story noting that Brown
had been cautioned the night before not to fly to New York City on 9/11,
but Brown has never revealed who warned him). It is plausible that Rice
was his source (she probably knew him from her tenure at Stanford and
had been on the board of San Francisco based Chevron corporation), but it is
unlikely that proof will ever be made public. If Rice really was Brown’s
source, then leaking the truth to a famous racist would be a great means
to discredit the information.

Mainstream news sources document that a few people were
warned not to fly or to get out of the way. Barbara Bush's book Reflections: Life After The White House stated

“my nephew Jim Pierce narrowly escaped injury
or possible death. He was scheduled to attend a meeting on the 102nd
floor of the South Tower, which was the second building hit. However,
the night before, the meeting was moved to an adjacent building because
the group had outgrown the conference room.
an excerpt is posted at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3225746/site/newsweek/

Newsweek also reported two weeks after 9/11 that “On
Sept. 10.... a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel
plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.”
Like most suspicious evidence about 9/11 in the mainstream media, there
was not ever any follow-up.

The “4,000 Jews warned” story was a great
false target for media attention to distract from a lot of evidence
for foreknowledge (and consciously allowing it to happen). Since about
one-third of New York is Jewish, having a lot of anti-semites promote
information about 9/11 complicity was a brilliant technique to discourage
many of the victims and bystanders from questioning the official story.
Some of the websites now promoting disinformation about 9/11 complicity
(fake claims that distract from real evidence) are also advocates of
Holocaust Denial, which ensures that most Bush opponents will shy away
from the embedded truths about 9/11 in the websites. www.oilempire.us/holocaust-denial.html discusses in detail how Holocaust
Deniers are inserting disinformation into the 9/11 truth movement.

One curious fact that might or might not be relevant
is the towers were less than half full when attacked. Figures vary,
but the WTC had between 15,000 and 25,000 people inside at 8:46 am on
9/11 -- on a normal workday at least 50,000 people worked there. However,
one WTC employee that I personally know of (a low-level computer operator)
merely had not yet arrived at work and saw the events from a distance.

The idea that thousands in the towers would have been
specifically warned makes no sense considering the perpetrators could
not risk letting lots of people know what was going to happen. Warning
more than a tiny handful of people would have risked exposing the operation.
The fact that Barbara Olsen, wife of US Solictor Ted Olsen, was on the
doomed Flight 77, suggests that very few actually were warned, and it
was her bad luck to be caught up in the events. Once trapped on board,
there was nothing anyone could have done to save her despite her loyalty
to the regime. Her fate is reminiscent of a story from the Nazi death
camp at Treblinka -- a German non-Jewish woman and her sons accidentally
got on a train that took German Jews to the camp. According to survivors,
she protested that she was not Jewish and her husband was a military
officer. But she and her sons were killed anyway, since there was no
way she could have been allowed to return to Germany with knowledge
of the terrible truth. Once swept up into the system there was no way she could have escaped.

"They don't have any excuse because the information was in
their lap, and they didn't do anything to prevent it." - Senator
Richard Shelby, then ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence
Committee; member of the joint intelligence committee that investigated
9/11

"I don't believe any longer that it's a matter
of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we
want to know why they didn't act on it."
- Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican member of the joint intelligence
committee that investigated 9/11

Specter was the Warren Commission attorney who invented
the ludicrous idea of the "magic bullet" to reduce the number
of bullets actually fired at JFK (and therefore make it slightly plausible
that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman - a view that very few citizens
of the Oil Empire have, for good reason).

"Should we have known? Yes, we should have. Could we have
known? Yes, I believe we could have because of the hard targets [CIA operatives were tracking]."
-- Representative Porter Goss, Chairman of the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence; Republican co-chairman of the joint
intelligence committee that investigated 9/11

"For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss
came late Monday when he got a call from what he described as his airport
security -- a full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist
attacks -- advising him that Americans should be cautious about their
air travel."

The Times of London - September 27 2001Rushdie's air ban By James Doran

The author Salman Rushdie believes that US authorities knew of an imminent
terrorist strike when then banned him from taking internal flights in
Canada and the US only a week before the attacks.
On September 3 the Federal Aviation Authority made an emergency ruling
to prevent Mr Rushdie from flying unless airlines complied with strict
and costly security measures. Mr Rushdie told The Times that the airlines
would not upgrade their security.
The FAA told the author's publisher that US intelligence had given warning
of "something out there" but failed to give any further details.
The FAA confirmed that it stepped up security measures concerning Mr Rushdie
but refused to give a reason.
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.

"On Sept. 10.... a group of top Pentagon officials
suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because
of security concerns."
Newsweek 24 September 2001

"CounterPunch has also learned that an internal memo was sent
around Goldman Sachs in Tokyo on September 10 advising all employees of
a possible terrorist attack. It recommended all employees to avoid any
American government buildings."
September 14, 2001 Aftershockswww.counterpunch.org/aftershocks.html

Saturday, November 30, 2002 http://xymphora.blogspot.com
There are some intriguing instances of foreknowledge of September 11 from
unlikely sources:
1. On September 10, a fifth-grader in a Dallas suburb told his teacher
World War III would begin the next day, and the United States would lose.
This occurred in a northern suburb of Dallas. Just a few days before the
student's remarks, the FBI had raided InfoCom Corporation, a website hosting
company for clients in the Middle East, which is located in the nearby
suburb of Richardson. Across the road from InfoCom's offices is the headquarters
of the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charitable organization which
was the largest Islamic charity in the U. S. and whose chairman was a
vice president of InfoCom, and which has been accused of being a sponser
of Hamas terrorists in Israel (there may also have been family connections
between Hamas and InfoCom). The Holy Land Foundation was subsequently
shut down by the U. S. government. The FBI investigated the matter of
the prescient student and dismissed it on the rather unsatisfactory grounds
that the teacher later decided she could not be certain the boy had actually
predicted World War III would begin on the same day as the terrorist attacks
(do they think she must have imagined this story?).
2. The most famous story of foreknowledge is that of the 14-year-old student
in Brooklyn, who supposedly stared out the window of his school at the
WTC on September 6, and predicted that the towers would not be standing
the next week. The story was investigated but the issue appears to remain
a mystery and the student remains in the school. There are a few other
similar stories around (see the Insight article), most of which are probably
legends, but this story appears to be an example of true foreknowledge.
3. A writer for the Village Voice was in a cab driven by an Arab cab driver
on July 16, 2001. The driver told her that he would be going home to Egypt
sometime in late August or September, as Osama bin Laden had planned big
terrorist attacks for New York and Washington for that time. She reported
him on September 13, which caused him to be questioned, but not arrested,
by the FBI. Over a year later she asked him about it. After initially
denying that that he told her about the attacks, he admitted that he had,
saying: "But many people knew this." He said it was merely common
knowledge in the Arab world. There are other stories involving cab drivers
not working on the morning of September 11, which are probably mostly
urban legends.The common factor in these stories is an odd reluctance
by the authorities to believe any of them. Of course, it is now very embarrassing
to all American police and intelligence agencies, not to mention the Bush
Administration, that knowledge of the attacks should have been so readily
available, and therefore they have an interest in downplaying any stories
of foreknowledge. It seems to me that there were rumors in the Arab community
that were taken semi-seriously, but these rumors were never reported as
people felt, no doubt correctly, that the authorities would not believe
them. Schoolchildren and talkative cab drivers were the only ones who
would mention them outside the community. In the wake of the massive number
of arrests of young Arab men who were held unconstitutionally, often without
proper legal representation, and eventually released, the Arab community
will probably take future warnings much more seriously but will not dare
report them to the authorities. There is a cost to racial profiling and
the denial of constitutional rights.

published on the Drudge Report

German police confirm Iranian deportee phoned warnings
Fri Sep 14 2001 16:44:18 ET
German police have confirmed an Iranian man phoned US police from his
deportation cell to warn of the planned attack on the World Trade Centre.
The Lower Saxony Justice Ministry has confirmed the man warned of the
impending series of terrorist attacks, but had not been believed.
Spokesman Frank Woesthoff said the man phoned America "several times",
but refused to give further details.
He said the US Secret Service had not told the ministry about the calls
received from the Langenhagen prison until after the attacks.
"I cannot say anything about the man and the ministry does not know
the content of the conversations," he added.
The Hanover daily newspaper Neue Presse reported the 29-year-old was dismissed
as mentally unstable when he gave the warning of a terrorist attack to
occur this week.
The ministry would not reveal when the calls had been made.

Words of Power #34: Katrina, 9/11 and Iraq -- An Almost Incomprehensible Truth

[excerpt]

By Richard Power

Over the last 13 years, I have delivered executive briefings on global security issues and led training sessions for professionals in forty countries, I have written well over a hundred security-related articles and op-ed pieces in the print media. I have an informed opinion. And there are two important points about the Bush-Cheney regime that I want to impress upon you, the first point is that this cabal is responsible for the most sweeping and significant failure of overall security policy -- both in the USA and in the world -- in modern history; the second point is that it is willful, it is not due to incompetence, it is driven by a need to turn the USA and the world upside side, just as a cosmetic surgeon would break the bones of someone's face to re-shape into a different one. It is not inconvenient truth, it is an inexcusable truth: this massive failure was not the result of bumbling, it was the result of betrayal.

The most important set of established facts concerning the 9/11 attacks supercedes any and all of the unanswered questions about 9/11; and that set of facts is that the Bush-Cheney national insecurity team was warned repeatedly -- both from inside our own intelligence community and from the intelligence agencies of numerous friendly governments -- that Bin Laden was coming for us that summer.

The story of FBI counterterrorism expert John P. O'Neill's last year on Earth confirms the heedlessness of this cabal. O'Neill was running the Cole investigation, he quit the Bureau in frustration because the Bush-Cheney connection to the Saudi rulers was blocking his efforts. He went to work as head of security for the WTC, and died on 9/11. As Alanis M. sings, "Isn't it ironic?" (You can learn more about O'Neill from PBS Frontline's The Man Who Knew.

Further corroborative evidence of the heedlessness of the Bush-Cheney national insecurity team is available at Borders or Barnes & Nobel (or better yet, the Buzzflash store): former National Security Council official Richard A. Clarke and former CIA Director George Tenet both write of desperate attempts to get the threat from Al Qaeda moved to the top of the agenda that summer.

They looked the other way, because they were looking for an opportunity to go to war in the Middle East and Central Asia (this hope is expressed wistfully in PNAC); and they were looking for an excuse to weaken the Constitution, and in particular the Bill of Rights, in an effort to turn the US federal government into a cash cow for cronies (can you say, "Halliburton"?) and a cudgel against political enemies (ala the DoJ scandal), etc.-- in short, the strategy was to control as much of the world's oil reserves as possible and to build a one-party state at home. 9/11 gave them a leg up.

The BBC was recently told by Niaz Naik, a Pakistani Foreign Secretary,
that senior American officials were warning them as early as mid-July
that military action for mid-October was being planned for Afghanistan.
In 1996, the Department of Energy was issuing reports on the desirability
of a pipeline through Afghanistan, and in 1998, Unocal testified before
the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific that this pipeline was
crucial to transport Caspian Basin oil to the Indian Ocean.
Given this evidence that a military operation to secure at least a portion
of Afghanistan has been on the table, possibly as early as five years
ago, I can't help but conclude that the actions we are seeing put into
motion now are part of a pre-September 11th agenda. I'm absolutely sure
of that, in fact. The planning alone for operations, of this scale,
that are now taking shape, would take many months. And we are seeing
them take shape in mere weeks.
It defies common sense. This administration is lying about this whole
thing being a "reaction" to September 11th. That leads me,
in short order, to be very suspicious of their yet-to-be-provided evidence
that someone in Afghanistan is responsible. It's just too damn convenient.
Which also leads me to wonder-just for the sake of knowing-what actually
did happen on September 11th, and who actually is responsible.

THE COUNTER-TERRORIST, Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, Issue of January
14, 2002www.newyorker.com/FACT/?020114fa_FACT1:
“[I]intelligence had been streaming in concerning a likely Al Qaeda
attack. ‘It all came together in the third week in June
[2001],’ Clarke said. ‘The C.I.A.'s view was that a major
terrorist attack was coming in the next several weeks.’ On July 5th, Clarke summoned all the domestic security agencies—the
Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard, Customs, the Immigration
and Naturalization Service, and the F.B.I.—and told them to increase
their security in light of an impending attack.”

The media's spotlight on `foreknowledge'
and so-called `FBI lapses' served to distract public attention from the
broader issue of political deception. Not a word was mentioned concerning
the role of the CIA, which throughout the entire post-Cold War era, has
aided and abetted Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, as part of its covert operations.
"Of course they knew! The foreknowledge issue is a red herring. The
`Islamic Brigades' are a creation of the CIA. In standard CIA jargon,
Al Qaeda is categorized as an `intelligence asset.' Support to terrorist
organizations is an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. Al Qaeda continues
to this date (2002) to participate in CIA covert operations in different
parts of the World. These `CIA-Osama links' do not belong to a bygone
era, as suggested by the mainstream media. . . .
"The CIA keeps track of its `intelligence assets'. Amply documented,
Osama bin Laden's whereabouts were always known. Al Qaeda is infiltrated
by the CIA. In other words, there were no `intelligence failures'! In
the nature of a well-led intelligence operation, the `intelligence asset'
operates (wittingly or unwittingly) with some degree of autonomy, in relation
to its U.S. government sponsors, but ultimately it acts consistently,
in the interests of Uncle Sam.
"While individual FBI agents are often unaware of the CIA's role,
the relationship between the CIA and Al Qaeda is known at the top levels
of the FBI. Members of the Bush Administration and the U.S. Congress are
fully cognizant of these links.
"The foreknowledge issue focussing on `FBI lapses' is an obvious
smokescreen. While the whistleblowers serve to underscore the weaknesses
of the FBI, the role of successive U.S. administrations (since the presidency
of Jimmy Carter) in support of the `Islamic Militant Base', is simply
not mentioned.
--Michel Chossudovsky, Political Deception--The Missing Link Behind 9-11,Centre
for Research on Globalisation, 27 Jun 2002 www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/CHO206A.html

"On July 5 of last year, a month and a day before President
Bush first heard that al Qaeda might plan a hijacking, the White House
summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room. 'Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's
going to happen soon,' the government's top counterterrorism
official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, according to two of
those present. The group included the Federal Aviation Administration,
along with the Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and Immigration and Naturalization
Service...."
Before Sept. 11, Unshared Clues and Unshaped Policy
Washington Post, 17 May 2002

"Generally it is impossible to carry out an act of terror
on the scenario which was used in the USA yesterday. We had such facts
too. As soon as something like that happens here, I am reported about
that right away and in a minute we are all up.”
Commander-in-Chief of Russian Airforce, Anatoli Kornukov
Pravda online: 18:50 hrs 12th Sept 2001

"The government source said the [British] Prime Minister was
always instantly contactable under the special communications system wherever
he was, at home or overseas. An RAF source said that even if an airliner
was hijacked at Heathrow and then turned east towards London, there would
still be time to act...."
Blair Controls Response to Hijack
London Times, 29 Sept 2001

Tuesday, September 18, 2001http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2001_09_01_xymphora_archive.html
One way to determine if the oligarchy had foreknowledge of the terrorism
is to check the records of the victims. If there are no dead generals
in the Pentagon, and neither dead senior executives, senior partners,
nor sons of the oligarchy (i. e., you don't see Ritchie Rich IV on the
list), and find that all these people were miraculously saved as they
unavoidably had to be out of the office that morning, you can draw your
own conclusions.

Barbara Bush's book Reflections: Life After The White
House

"my nephew Jim Pierce narrowly escaped injury or possible death.
He was scheduled to attend a meeting on the 102nd floor of the South
Tower, which was the second building hit. However, the night before,
the meeting was moved to an adjacent building because the group had
outgrown the conference room."
an excerpt is posted at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3225746/site/newsweek/

President Bush's cousin should have been in the World Trade
Centre when it was attacked.
Jim Pierce, managing director of AON Corporations, had arranged a business
conference on the 105th floor of the South Tower where its New York offices
were based.
But his group was too large so they decided to move across the street
to the Millennium Hotel.
Two hundred AON staff are missing.
Mr Pierce told Houston, Texas TV station KPRC-TV he saw the explosion
from the hotel.
"It might as well have been a nuclear explosion," he claims.
"They were gone in a second. It was a huge fireball that came down
and then back up. It was just raining metal and debris. We knew immediately
that it was right below our offices."
He adds: "There's no doubt in my mind that people I walked past on
my way out of there did not make it."
Mr Pierce says he was concerned for the safety of his first cousin's family.
"These evil people would stop at nothing and what better way to go
after the President than to attack his offspring?" he said.
Mr Pierce has been in contact with former President George Bush and former
first lady, Barbara Bush.
He said the first family was being strong and he was incredibly proud
of his cousin.

NY
Times: Bush Warned bin Laden Would Hijack Planes
"The White House said tonight that President Bush had been warned
by American intelligence agencies in early August that Osama bin Laden
was seeking to hijack aircraft..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/16/politics/16INQU.html

CNN:
Bush briefed on hijacking threat before 9-11
"President Bush's daily intelligence briefings in the weeks leading
up to the September 11 terror attacks included a warning of the possibility
that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network would attempt to hijack a U.S.-based
airliner, senior administration officials said Wednesday."
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/05/15/bush.sept.11/index.html

UK
Guardian: Bush knew terrorists would hijack planes
"George Bush received specific warnings in the weeks before 11 September
that an attack inside the United States was being planned by Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network, US government sources said yesterday….
The memo received by Bush on 6 August contained unconfirmed information
passed on by British intelligence in 1998 revealing that al-Qaeda operatives
had discussed hijacking a plane to negotiate the release of Sheikh Omar
Abdel Rahman, the Muslim cleric imprisoned in America for his part in
a plot to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,718312,00.html

Sunday Herald: Britain warned
Bush to expect 9-11 al-Qaeda hijackings
"Britain gave President Bush a categorical warning to expect multiple
airline hijackings by the al-Qaeda network a month before the September
11 attacks which killed nearly 3000 people and triggered the international
war against terrorism."
http://www.sundayherald.com/24822

Village
Voice: Officials Warned of Plans to Attack DC, NY with Planes
"The U.S. government had received repeated warnings of impending
attacks—and attacks using planes directed at New York and Washington—for
several years. The government never told us about what it knew was coming."
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0332/mondo4.php

AP:
9/11 report, Rice conflict; Bush got specific data on threats
"...the briefing given to the president a month before the suicide
hijackings included recent intelligence that al-Qaida was planning to
send operatives to the United States to carry out an attack using high
explosives."
http://www.sunspot.net/business/nationworld/bal-te.rice29jul29,0,2620591.story?coll=bal-business-headlines

MSNBC: White
House Briefed on Imminent bin Laden Attack
"One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and
prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist
strike 'in the coming weeks,' the congressional investigators found. The
intelligence briefing went on to say: 'The attack will be spectacular
and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests.
Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no
warning.'"
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3067907/
http://www.msnbc.com/news/907379.asp?0cv=CB10

MSN: Condoleezza Rice's False
Statement
A: "The overwhelming bulk of the evidence was that this was an attack
that was likely to take place overseas."
- White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, in a May 16
news briefing.
B: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
- Title of the CIA's Aug. 6 briefing memo to President Bush . . .
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2066154

Newsweek: Day before
9-11, Pentagon Generals Cancelled Flights
"On Sept. 10, NEWSWEEK has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials
suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because
of security concerns."
http://www.msnbc.com/news/629606.asp (link
dead)

SF
Gate: Mayor got 8-hour warning Before 9-11 Attacks – September 12,
2001
For Mayor Willie Brown, the first signs that something was amiss came
late Monday when he got a call from what he described as his airport security
- - a full eight hours before yesterday's string of terrorist attacks
-- advising him that Americans should be cautious about their air travel.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/12/MN229389.DTL

Florida
State: Jeb Bush Declares Martial Law 9-7-01
"Based on the potential massive damage to life and property that
may result from an act of terrorism at a Florida port, the necessity to
protect life and property from such acts of terrorism..."
http://www.state.fl.us/eog_new/eog/orders/2001/september/eo2001-261-09-07-01.html

CBS
News: Ashcroft Avoided Commercial Travel Prior to 9-11
"In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling
exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the
Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment"
by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private
jet for the remainder of his term."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/printable303601.shtml

UK
Independent: Taliban Mole Warning Ignored
"Weeks before the terrorist attacks on 11 September, the United States
and the United Nations ignored warnings from a secret Taliban emissary
that Osama bin Laden was planning a huge attack on American soil."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=331115

NY Times:
"President Mubarek Warned US of Al Qaeda Plot”
"Egyptian intelligence warned American officials about a week before
Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's network was in the advance stages of executing
a significant operation against an American target, President Hosni Mubarak
said in an interview on Sunday."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/04/national/04WARN.html

Village
Voice: US Ignored France Warnings
"A key point in unraveling why the FBI failed to follow up leads
on Al Qaeda terrorism now centers on the Bureau's contemptuously brushing
aside warnings from French intelligence a few days before 9-11."
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0222/ridgeway2.php

Intl. Herald Tribune:
White House Ignored Arab Warnings
"When the hubbub about what the White House did or didn't know before
Sept. 11 dies down, Congressional or other investigators should consider
the specific warnings that friendly Arab intelligence services sent to
Washington in the summer of 2001."
http://www.iht.com/articles/58269.html

UK
News-Telegraph: Israel issued urgent warning of large-scale terror attacks
Israeli intelligence officials say that they warned their counterparts
in the United States last month that large-scale terrorist attacks on
highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent."
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml
;$sessionid$52PMOXQAADW5PQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?
xml=/news/2001/09/16/wcia16.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/09/16/ixhome

NY Post:
FBI Warned D.C. It Was A Target
"A Minnesota FBI agent investigating Zacarias Moussaoui testified
yesterday that he notified the Secret Service weeks before Sept. 11 that
a terror team might hijack a plane and 'hit the nation's capital.'"
http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/57848.htm

Yahoo
News: FBI Warnings Ignored
"An FBI supervisor, sounding a prophetic pre-Sept. 11 alarm, warned
FBI headquarters that student pilot Zacarias Moussaoui was so dangerous
he might 'take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center,'
a congressional investigator said in a report Tuesday."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=512&ncid=716&e=4&u=/
ap/20020924/ap_on_go_co/attacks_intelligence

Independent: America
had 12 warnings of aircraft attack
"American intelligence received many more clues before the 11 September
attacks than previously disclosed, that terrorists might hijack planes
and turn them into weapons, a joint congressional committee was told yesterday."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=334633

Yahoo
News: Spy Agencies Had Pre-9/11 Threats on U.S. Soil
"U.S. intelligence agencies picked up threats of attacks inside the
United States and of using airplanes as weapons during the spring and
summer before last year's Sept. 11 attacks, but were more focused on the
possibility of an assault overseas, a congressional source said on Tuesday."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=578&ncid=578&e=1&u=
/nm/20020917/ts_nm/attack_congress_intelligence_dc

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0110/S00008.htm>Vanity
Fair: Bin Laden Relatives Secretly Evacuated From NY
"Patrick Tyler of the New York Times is reporting from Washington:
'In the first days after the attacks on Sept. 11, the Saudi Arabian ambasador
to Washington, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, supervised the urgent evacuation
of 24 members of Osama bin Laden's extended family from the United States
fearing they might be subjected to violence.'"
http://www.guerrillanews.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?
Cat=&Board=gnn&Number=204363&
page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&part=all

Sydney
Morning Herald: Administration Told US agents “Back off bin Ladens”
"US special agents were told to back off the bin Laden family and
the Saudi royals soon after George Bush became president, although that
has all changed since September 11, it was reported today."
http://www.old.smh.com.au/news/0111/07/world/world100.html

Ha'aretz Daily: CEO Says Workers Warned Hours Before World
Trade Center Hit -- FBI Investigating
"Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers
received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September
11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating
with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying
to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack."
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=77744

NY Times: White House Approved Secret Evacuation of Bin Ladens
After 9-11
"Richard Clarke, who ran White House crisis team after Sept 11 terror
attacks, says top White House officials personally approved evacuation
of dozens of influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden,
from United States in days after Sept 11, when most flights were grounded."
<http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/090503A.shtml>
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/090503A.shtml

Tampa Tribune: Bodyguards tell of Secret Bin Laden Flight
"The hastily arranged flight out of Raytheon Airport Services, a
private hangar on the outskirts of Tampa International Airport, was anything
but ordinary. It lifted off the tarmac at a time when every private plane
in the nation was grounded due to safety concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"
http://www.dirtybush.com/connectthesedots.html

UK Minister: "Bush had Foreknowledge of 9-11 attacks"
"...it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert
the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan
in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1036588,00.html

Prior
knowledge of 1993 WTC attack

FBI prior knowledge of 1993 WTC bombing The FBI had an informant in the group that committted the 1993
attack. The informant told the government about the plans in advance,
and asked for permission to interfere with the attack by ensuring that
the bomb wouldn't work. The informant was told not to interfere.

New York Times
Thursday October 28, 1993 Page A1
"Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart
Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast"

by Ralph Blumenthal

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building
a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center,
and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting
harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after
the blast.
The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb
and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by
an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer,
Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said.
The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of
hours of tape recordings that Mr. Salem secretly made of his
talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as
being in a far better position than previously known to foil
the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers.

Afghanistan
War Planned BEFORE 9-11

The largest US covert operation (at least before 9-11) armed the Mujaheddin
during the Soviet - Afghan war. Pakistan was used to funnel weapons, even
while Pakistan developed its nuclear program.

One theory about 9-11 is that it was "blowback" - an
unintended consequence of US foreign policy in Afghanistan. (The largest
foreign CIA operation ever was the arming of the Mujaheddin during the
Soviet-Afghan war - while Pakistan developed its nuclear weapons program.)
However, "blowback" does not explain why fighter planes were not sent
up to intercept the hijacked airplanes until it was too late.